Dear All -

Serendipitously stumbling across this while researching another topic, I learned about wifi-enabled decoders. This technology allows you to connect directly to a decoder on a loco / accessory to control it and receive feedback. (Some is not wifi-based but rather bluetooth-based - less bandwidth but a lower power requirement.) I'm sure you can see the benefits of such a scheme: the track supplies only power, freedom from specific protocols like DCC / MFX etc., unrestricted feedback from locos / accessories to name a few that occur to me.

The ecosystem seems to be quite small at present. A few start-ups are / were marketing decoders, namely loco.engineering and BlueRail trains. Additionally, Geoff Bunza's MRH Forum blog provides a DIY approach. Microcontrollers with built-in wifi are cheap and available in sizes like present decoders and can be run off of track power or even batteries (and thus a dead rail option).

What do other forum members know about the technology (is it bleeding edge or passé), are there providers other than those listed, and are there any present users of it who can speak from experience about its strengths and weaknesses?

Osoraku

When I'm not ruining IKEA products, I work in IT infrastructure.

I remain deeply unconvinced. At a home level, these products are cool - HM7000 particularly is very neat; except for the part where you have to give them personal data to be allowed to open the app. Cringe. Still; at this point they need to get rid of the iTraveller and all the DC controllers and just ship every starter-set loco pre-fitted with R7335. It'd make so much more sense from both a product perspective and a marketing perspective; and would mean meeting the same real-world specs as Marklin start-up but at a much lower cost (as no MS2). Actually - possibly lower cost than their current DC sets!

I also use a Roco z21 system as my only controller, and it works well! However I also have drivers-eye-view in one of my locomotives and keeping the WiFi stable enough for that is frequently challenging.

And at a show? 100 loco's in a room, all connected by bluetooth or WiFi; all interfering with each other, the building WiFi, whatever hotspots people have set up on their phone... (and my camera train) that sounds hellish to me.

For that reason; if I was doing any serious driving with multiple loco's I'd hook my phone/tablet to the z21 over the ethernet network to avoid issues with WiFi and Bluetooth - especially since anything in a Loco is going to be on 2.4GHz and fighting every piece of IoT trash around.

This makes more sense for larger gauges to me; where density of trains will be lower - but I'd still be cautious of it at event-scale.

I wonder if Miniatur Wunderland use WiFi control for anything?